


ash after flame

by serendipitousDescent



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 15:52:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14697420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serendipitousDescent/pseuds/serendipitousDescent
Summary: “Ex… excuse me,” comes a hesitant insertion, as if stopping Kira and Momo wasn’t the best thing that could have resulted from this. “I think I can… fix this?”The question makes Rangiku want to laugh for real, until her stomach hurts and tears gather in the corners of her eyes.“You can, Inoue.”--In which Orihime changes everything.





	ash after flame

**Author's Note:**

> I... know I should be posting a chapter of Overturn today, instead of this, but that clearly didn't get written. So, enjoy this shameless piece of what if female characters were allowed to affect the plot? With a nice side of screwing over Aizen's plans.

Rangiku comes to an abrupt halt, her breath caught in her lungs and her gaze focused on the figure crumpled in the centre of the otherwise empty plaza. 

With their hair pulled back into a bun, with that badge tied to their arm, they could only be Momo. Her shoulders are shaking. The force of it nearly travels all the way down her back, moments from consuming her entirely. Sobs like those could not be mistaken for anything else, more than capable of throwing Rangiku and anyone else off-guard. 

Two days.

Only two days have gone by since the second group of intruders arrived, barely a day off the first. Alarm bells had rung through Seireitei, just as they will again. 

That much is inevitable. Perhaps Rangiku missed Gin by moments when she went to investigate, perhaps Gin truly went after that first intruder, but that precisely-cut triangle in the wall of Seireitei hinted towards this and so much more. That hole is the reason for the newly emptied sake bottles that fill Rangiku’s room, each one bringing her no closer to deciding a course of action. 

Two - no, three - days, and Rangiku feels her gaze being dragged upwards. Up and away from her sobbing friend, and towards something that makes the blood in her veins crawl to a stop. 

This plaza should be abandoned. 

No one should have been here, not unless they were taking the shortcut to the First Division. The same route that Momo showed her a few years back, after a night in the Third Division with Kira left them both to stumble back home. 

Aizen’s corpse should not be pinned to the side of a building. 

Blood is splattered around his body. Only someone much stronger than any of them could have done something like that. To pin a taicho to a bell tower, the sword protruding from his chest the only thing keeping his corpse from falling to the ground, would require someone with a bankai, at the very least. A bankai and the knowledge that Aizen would be wandering through this very plaza what must have been hours ago. 

The blood is no longer dripping down the building. Rangiku has seen enough dead bodies in her time as a shinigami to know that would take a few hours, even forgetting the rest of it. Like how none of them had noticed a taicho’s reiatsu, the spike in power that would have come with the release of a bankai. 

Funny, how Rangiku can still think about these things as she stands in front of a crime such as this one. As one of her friends has fallen to the ground in tears, the loss of her taicho cutting so deeply that the rest of the world has clearly faded away. Funny that focusing on the blood and that slim zanpakuto is so much easier than acknowledging the corpse itself. A lot of things are funny about this situation, but never has Rangiku been so disinclined to laugh. 

Whether Rangiku thought Kuchiki Rukia deserved her punishment is beside the point. The execution of an unseated officer, even one with more ties to seated officers than can be explained, does not warrant intruders coming in and murdering a taicho. 

Rangiku stops before she scoffs at herself. Hard to call someone an intruder when said person is a young woman with enough innocence left to apologize to the people she’s been forced to fight. No, if anything, the person who did this had to belong to the second group who came in here. The rowdy young men who spent all of yesterday causing trouble for almost all of Seireitei. 

To think that she spent most of yesterday laughing at the reports as they came in. 

To think she thought it was good for them all, to have someone push back against the unfairness of this all and show them that a public execution does not match Kuchiki Rukia’s crime. Also, that it would cause everyone to lighten up a bit. 

To think, to think, to think. 

Rangiku has been far too much thinking these past few days. 

“What’cha all doing - ah, is tha’ Aizen up there?” 

A shuddering breath forces itself from her lungs. Rangiku does not notice that Momo’s shoulders stop shaking, that she stops being consumed by grief and starts being consumed by revenge. Rangiku notices nothing until Momo twists around, already firmly grasping at her zanpakuto. 

All it takes is a moment for reality to shatter in front of her. Haineko screeches in the back of her mind, a yowling that urges her forward, even as Kira halts Momo’s blade. As Kira stops Momo from attacking Gin. 

Rangiku should be doing the same, but Haineko is too distracting to allow her to process the scene in front of her. Wrong, Haineko screeches, rather than compel her to protect Gin or Momo or Kira, rather than drive her away from getting involved at all. What should be stable no longer is, the Seireitei that Rangiku relies on setting itself ablaze as the assumptions made in front of her become clear. Fifty years have gone by without internal conflict. Fifty years without worrying about whether she would have a place to sleep at night. 

Something shifts in the corner of her eye. Maybe that something should be Haineko, but her zanpakuto has never once appeared outside of the confines of their mental landscape.

This something is more substantial than Haineko would be, anyways. It is the type of thing - the type of person, perhaps - that can shout an unfamiliar command and have light fill the plaza, followed by a high-pitched ringing from where Kira and Momo began to charge at one another once more. 

Their second attacks never come to be. Rangiku should be standing between them, a physical wall where no other stands. But there is another wall, a wall of light that does not struggle beneath the force of two fukutaicho-level zanpakuto, does not waver in any way, shape or form. At the very least, Kira should manage to make it move with his shikai. But weight does not seem to bother this barrier, even as it floats above the ground. 

“Ex… excuse me,” comes a hesitant insertion, as if stopping Kira and Momo wasn’t the best thing that could have resulted from this. “I think I can… fix this?” 

The question makes Rangiku want to laugh for real, until her stomach hurts and tears gather in the corners of her eyes. 

“You can, Inoue.” 

Inoue, Rangiku repeats to herself. A name like that begs to roll off of her tongue, her lips moving through the soft syllables. Nothing compared to the purr of that name in the back of her mind, Haineko doing the mental equivalent of a lazy stretch. If she didn’t know better, she would say her zanpakuto trusts this person to fix this bonfire of a mess. 

It makes her staring feel different from everyone else’s. None of them can help themselves after being interrupted in such a dramatic way by someone they have never met before. Interrupted by a woman who bites at her bottom lip, even though her back is straight enough to suggest she’s been trained. Inoue is the name that has been peppered through accounts of run-ins with the first intruder, the one who made that hole in Seireitei’s wall. 

Laughing at those accounts seems all the more appropriate now that Rangiku is standing in front of the woman in question. No one knows what they’re facing, not even Rangiku herself. 

Her hands do not waver. Neither Rangiku’s or Inoue’s, steady even as Inoue shifts her gaze from person to person. A weak smile is gifted to each of them, as if that might make up for something. Make up for what, Rangiku can’t quite tell. People are not usually so full of contradictions, not hesitant and strong, determined and apologetic, put together and standing in front of a crime scene. Someone who can’t bring herself to meet Rangiku’s eyes, but has Kuchiki Rukia standing behind her, dressed in the dark robes of a shinigami.

A laugh escapes from Rangiku now, not quite loud enough for another person to hear it. With the amount of damage Byakuya did to Rukia’s spiritual centre, she should not be able to wear those clothes for months. And those months would have to happen anywhere other than in a prison, where absorbing residual reiatsu is nearly impossible.

Everything about this situation is becoming more and more unbelievable. 

Half of Rangiku expects to wake up at any moment, to roll over and fall off the couch in the Tenth Division’s office. The rest of her knows that won’t happen. Her dreams would have Kira and Momo continuously attacking that wall of light rather than stepping back and contemplating it. Her dreams would include Gin moving into the centre of the plaza and declaring that this is some horrible surprise party. 

But Gin stays back and watches everything unfold without the slightest hint of a smile. Momo and Kira let their zanpakuto shift out of shikai, even as they remain drawn. Their anger seems to have been shelved for the moment, but sometimes a moment is only a moment. 

A moment will last for however long a threat stands in front of them. Rangiku keeps staring at Inoue, takes everything into consideration. Pinning Aizen to that building is not something this woman would have done, that sliver of knowledge hitting her with the strength of a sledgehammer. A real threat would not wait until everyone has relaxed to attack, not when they could have taken advantage of the confusion before. 

A real threat would not show so much innocence, would not offer to fix a situation that clearly cannot be fixed. 

The dead cannot be brought back to life. 

Damage from assumed betrayals cannot be healed without time. 

“Right.” Inoue drops her hesitant smile, her chest rising as she breathes in deeply. “I can fix this.” 

Momo startles, finally turning away from Kira. “Fix...” 

Her protest dies off as Inoue bows deeply. 

More accurately, her protest has no hope once the wall of light starts to dismantle itself. A wall turns into three bright lights, turns into what appears to be a hair clip at first glance. Rangiku blinks once, then twice, and resists the urge to pinch herself, her confidence that this is not a dream wavering. 

Red hair falls over Inoue’s shoulders as she keeps bowing. Rangiku follows its descent, the lump in the back of her throat making it difficult to swallow. It is incredible how much bravery can be caught up in this woman, this woman who bares the back of her neck to countless armed enemies in her plea to let her help them. Ignoring this request would be more than just ungrateful, she thinks. 

Silence follows that shift of hair. 

No one moves. 

Most everyone is Seireitei is a spark or a flame, ready to start a fight at any moment or ready to protect both those they know and those they don’t. 

Rangiku is neither of those things.

Rangiku is the ash that comes after the fire has consumed everything in its grasp. She comes in the aftermath, capable of seeing the possibilities that come after the fire has gone out. More often than not, she ignores those possibilities in favour of badly timed jokes and drowning her sorrows in one too many bottles of sake. This may be the one time she cannot ignore them.

Her hand shifts away from Haineko’s hilt as she steps forward. Haineko is entirely silent within her, steady in a way that neither of them usually are. They both know that no one else could have taken up this role when Rangiku returns the low bow to a woman who could so easily become a threat.

A threat to Seireitei, to the one place where Rangiku has found stability over the years. 

“I am Matsumoto Rangiku, the fukutaicho of the Tenth Division,” she introduces herself, almost as if she has rehearsed for this very moment. “On the behalf of Soul Society, I accept your offer to help. Is there anything I can do to assist you?” 

Inoue’s eyes are wide when Rangiku brings herself out of the bow, wide with an emotion she cannot name. Whatever Inoue is attempting to convey feels familiar, though, like an old memory just now rising to the surface. That Rukia tilts her chin upwards, smugness radiating off her in waves, is almost a relief in comparison. 

Inoue bites at her lip, attention flickering back up to the corpse on the wall. “Can you get him down? I - I should be able to heal him.” 

Healing a dead man is impossible, Rangiku carefully does not say. 

This is the time for her to reconsider what is and is not possible. Besides, ignoring the flicker of hope in her chest will be much easier once Aizen’s corpse has been revealed as just that. 

“I can,” Rangiku offers, “but it will be a bit bloody.” 

“Thank you, Matsumoto-san.” 

Rangiku is the ash, left after a fire. 

But just as ash can allow for new possibilities, new plants to grow in the aftermath that would have otherwise been impossible, it can also smother and choke until nothing is left. Only the soft touch to her shoulder stops her from smothering herself, frozen as an unrecognizable face stares back up at her after Inoue attempts to heal Aizen’s body.


End file.
